Tweet for Free Tickets to the No Impact Man Premiere

Want free tickets to the premiere of the No Impact Man documentary in your city? All you have to do is tweet a message about the film, which will be in theaters on September 11th, 2009.

Here’s the info:

New York
Los Angeles
San Francisco
Berkeley
Chicago
Denver
Seattle
Philadelphia
Washington, DC
San Diego
Boston
St. Louis
Minneapolis
Salt Lake City

Follow these two easy steps:

1. Follow us on Twitter
2. Tweet the following:

“#NIMtix @oscopelabs is giving away tix to No Impact Man in theaters Sept 2009 www.noimpactdoc.com”

Winners will be announced soon – good luck! If you don’t score free tix or don’t live in one of the cities listed above, never fear: No Impact Man will be playing in a long list of theaters until November – see the schedule and theater info here.

Some info about the documentary:

Colin Beavan decides to completely eliminate his personal impact on the environment for the next year.

It means eating vegetarian, buying only local food, and turning off the refrigerator. It also means no elevators, no television, no cars, busses, or airplanes, no toxic cleaning products, no electricity, no material consumption, and no garbage.

No problem – at least for Colin – but he and his family live in Manhattan. So when his espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping wife Michelle and their two-year-old daughter are dragged into the fray, the No Impact Project has an unforeseen impact of its own.

Link [No Impact Doc] via [Treehugger]

Plant Tells You What it Needs via Twitter

Twitter, the social networking site that allows you to keep your friends updated on what’s going on in your life in 140 characters or less, is all the rage these days – and not just for actual humans. The Tweet-a-Watt blew the competition out of the water in the Greener Gadgets Competition, and now a new gadget allows your houseplants to communicate with you electronically, letting you know when they need attention.

Pothos the houseplant has over 2,300 followers on Twitter, who wait with bated breath for earth-shattering updates like “URGENT! Water me!”

From Discover Magazine, via The Huffington Post:

Granted, all it wants is water, but when plant owners are forgetful or just don’t have a green thumb, their green friends often go thirsty. The solution? Botanicalls, a device that sends wireless signals to Twitter. It’s made of soil moisture sensors that transmit information (too much moisture? too little?) through a circuit board to a microcontroller, just like a mini-computer.

The software has settings that allow you to program specifically for the type of plant and the unique qualities of the soil, and the language sent to Twitter can be customized—so the message can vary in tone from the polite “please” to the urgent “I’m desperately thirsty”—or, as Mr. Ikea Plant will tweet, “I’m wicked thirsty.”

Check out a sample of Pothos’ updates below:

So, now computers can allow our houseplants to talk to us. Kind of creepy, kind of amazing.

Link [Discover Magazine] via [The Huffington Post]

Hot Dish: New Climate Change News Application on Facebook

Grist.org has partnered with News Cloud to debut a new application on Facebook that allows users to read, discuss, post and share news about climate change. The application, called Hot Dish, also allows 6- to 25-year old U.S. residents who participate in the Hot Dish Action Team can earn points through online and offline actions and compete for rewards.

From News Cloud:

Top eligible participants can win a grand prize trip for two to the Arctic from Quark Expeditions, an Amazon Kindle 2, a “green” Apple MacBook and much more. Prizes will be awarded each week through May 3, 2009. Please read the official rules for full eligibility details.

The Hot Dish application is part of a study being conducted by University of Minnesota researchers to find new ways of engaging young people in current events inside social networks such as Facebook. The research is funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The research results will be published later this year. The software behind Hot Dish will be released to the open source community at the end of the project. A second Facebook application for University of Minnesota students is due in Q2. You can learn more about the research at http://newscloud.com/research

Check it out for yourself – it’s got top climate news, featured stories, and lots of challenges you can take part in. Right now, the grand prize ‘action reward’ is a trip for 2 to the Arctic! Watch the video clip below for more info.

Link [Hot Dish]

Tweet-a-Watt? Gadget Twitters Your Energy Use

A new gadget, revealed at the Greener Gadgets competition, has the power to embarrass you into improving your energy consumption habits. For less than fifty bucks, you can hack a Kill-a-Watt power monitor so that it automatically reports your energy use to all of your Twitter followers. It’s an interesting combination of creative gadget hacking, social networking and environmental accountability.

From Core 77, via Inhabitat:

Using “off-the-shelf hardware”, we have modified a Kill-a-Watt(TM) power meter to “tweet” (publish wirelessly) the daily KWH consumed to the user’s Twitter account (Cumulative Killowatt-hours). We are releasing this project as an “Open source hardware” project – in other words, anyone can make these, modify them and make a commercial product from the ideas and methods.

Here’s how it works: The modified Kill-a-Watt uses a “super-cap” to slowly recharge itself. Once there is enough power it turns on the Xbee wireless module which transmits thedata to a nearby computer (or internet connected microcontroller, like an Arduino). Once the power usage for the day is recorded it uses a predefined Twitter account (it can be your own) to publish your daily KWH consumption for the day. Multiple units can be used for an entire household.

This is pure genius. The whole process is explained in detail, including photos with notes, at Ladyada.net so you can DIY. This kind of gadget not only enables you to keep track of energy use trends in your household, but keeps you honest by telling all of your Twitter buddies every time you use a lot of energy.

Link [Core77] + [Ladyada.net] via [Inhabitat]